On Sat, 25 Apr 1998, Rusty Zickefoose wrote: ==> So, if someone, or possibly a group of someones, were to make the ==>following request to the various router vendors, would they be met with ==>approval by most of the readers? ==> ==> We requests that your routers be configurable, at the interface ==>level, to prevent the forwarding of an ICMP echo-request packet through an ==>interface that has a broadcast or wire address that matches the ==>destination address of that packet. We also request that the default ==>configurations of your routers be modified to prevent said forwarding. This is against RFC 1812. RFC 1812, "Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers", Section 5.3.5, specifies: --- A router MAY have an option to disable receiving network-prefix- directed broadcasts on an interface and MUST have an option to disable forwarding network-prefix-directed broadcasts. These options MUST default to permit receiving and forwarding network-prefix- directed broadcasts. --- Someone has stated before that editor(s) of said RFC are aware of this and have discussed the change in default. Note that I'm not arguing that it *should* be the default, I'm just arguing that vendors have implemented it this way because that's the way they were told to in the RFC. If after reading http://www.quadrunner.com/~chuegen/smurf.txt, you think that I believe directed-broadcasts should be on by default, go back and read agian. =) Now, since this has been beaten past the jelly stage, can we please put the topic to sleep? Thank you. /cah